Not quite a Ronald Reagan, Carl Sagan, San Diegan Pagan, since I live in Los Angeles.

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Harry Potter and the half-assed security

In the latest Harry Potter book, we see Hogwarts implementing security precautions in order to safeguard its students and faculty.

One step that was taken was that all the students were searched – wanded, in fact – to detect any harmful magic. In addition, all mail coming in or out was checked for harmful magic.

In spite of these precautions, two students are nearly killed by cursed items.

One of the items was a poisoned bottle of mead, which made it onto school grounds and into a professor's office.

It turned out that packages sent from various addresses in the nearby town were not checked. The addresses were trusted, and anything received from them was considered safe. When a key person was compromised (in this case, by a mind-control spell), the trusted address was no longer trustworthy, and a gaping hole in security was created.

Of course, since everyone knew everything was checked on its way into the school, no one felt the need to take any special precautions.

The moral of the story is, inadequate security can be worse than no security at all.